images by Samara Pearlstein
Ladies and gents, cats and kittens, folks of all identifications, hello! Hello! I have missed you all so much and I have missed the ability to sit down and watch a game of baseball like a sane, civilized person, and then draw stupid cartoons about that game of baseball, which is obviously the sanest, most civilized thing one can do. But here I am, and here you are, and here are some stupid cartoons, and together we can hug this out.
Most of you know that I have been in the midst of finishing up my master’s program. It has been an insane experience. I was also working, outside of class time and studio time and occasionally trying to stay sort of up-to-date on the art world time, since that is the very realm in which I was attempting to get a (nominally) professionalizing degree. While juggling all of that, I have also been dealing with some pretty serious health issues. All this meant that I had very little time or energy for… well… anything else at all. This came to include things like ‘normal human being friends’ and ‘getting the cat exercise’ and ‘sleep’ and ‘eating food that didn’t come out of a box from Trader Joes’. It also included Roar of the Tigers, as you surely noticed.
But now I have had my thesis exhibition, all my thesis writing is done, I have defended my work to my committee, I’ve graduated, and I’ve moved 3 years’ worth of art crud out of my studio and into my apartment (much to the dismay of myself and the cat).
We do graduation in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which is admittedly kind of cool. I am now a Master of Fine Arts. This is weird for me, is it weird for you? I guess it is also kind of cool.
I am still dealing with the health stuff, which, without getting into too many details, is very complicated and involves 10,000 moving parts that all have to be coordinated, mostly by me, because it turns out that’s not a thing that a hospital system really wants to do for you. Very, very luckily I live a literal 5 minute drive from a truly stellar hospital complex, and that has been a major help. But it is still sometimes overwhelming, and exhausting. I expect that things will be easier now that I’ve graduated, at least for a little bit, until I start teaching in the fall. I just ask you cats to bear with me on this one.
I have been out to exactly two (2) real live baseball games this season. One was a Rangers/Red Sox game, so I was confronted with Prince Fielder in a Rangers uniform. This was well before Prince made a bunch of rude comments about not caring about Detroit, so at the time it was a sight that caused me to have many Feelings. I am wearing my raincoat in this cartoon because it was freezing cold and also raining, none of which helped to mitigate the Feelings situation.
I missed the entire Tigers series in Boston, because it had the horrible luck to correspond exactly with my graduation weekend and all that insanity contained therein.
In any event, I am now starting to have bits of time here and there to watch Tigers games. Unparalleled luxury! I knew that they had been doing well, were leading the division, blah blah blah, so I was looking forward to some soothing, quality baseball.
So much for that. Why, Tigers? Why?? Is it because I now have time to sometimes pay attention to you? Is this like when I come home after being gone all day and most of the night and the cat is nice to me until I’ve fed her and then I get a hardcore cold shoulder to punish me for leaving her alone all that time? Is that what is going on here? I am SORRY, Tigers! I didn’t mean to leave you alone all day with nothing to do but curl up and sleep in sunbeams and bat your toy mice around! I was in the studio! I was working! Please love me again.
Miguel Cabrera, however, is a cat without grudges, and for this I am grateful.
